Today I took the circle route to the ?eagle farm? , Samish Island, and down the coast to Bayview St. Park and back to I-5. Figured it would be a good raptor day since we saw a dozen each of red-tails and eagles along the freeway.

At the private road turnout at the Samish River bridge the birds were large and so were their numbers. In one scan I counted 95 bald eagles. Looked like they were finishing off slaughtered livestock carcasses in the field, with 20 ravens, and 20 crows competing for scraps with glaucous-winged, Olympic and mew gulls harassing the corvids. Also several hundred mew gulls moving upriver, 300+ red-winged blackbirds, hundreds of starlings, 100 dunlin, 100 Brewer?s blackbirds, hundreds of wigeons, mallards, pintails, plus a handful of shovelers and green-winged teal. South across the road were several harriers plus red-tails and a few rough-legs and great blue herons, with of course trumpeter swans flying over and several thousand snow geese on the southern horizon.

Other spots were not as amazing, but a handful of long-tailed duck at the Samish Island beach access, and a merlin along Bow-Edison Rd., plus common loons, common goldeneyes, greater scaups, and buffleheads at Bayview St. Pk. Two Eurasian wigeons for the day.

No SEOWS; not much for small passerines other than the usual

We could have stopped at Eide for LEOW and SEOW, but decided to avoid the ruckus...seen them already and don?t need to go back for more disturbance


Mark Tomboulian

tomboulian AT comcast DOT net